Tuesday, July 4, 2017

Description: Lockhart (DeHaan), an ambitious
Wall Street executive, is sent by his company to a remote sanitarium in Switzerland
to retrieve a high ranking company official, Pembroke, who believes he is ill
and will not leave.

Review:

The wellness
center sits in an ancient castle on a hill in a remote area of the Swiss
Alps. People in the nearby village see the rich guests being driven up to the
spa but they never see anyone leave.

Lockhart arrives
to the picturesque setting and is given the runaround to see Pemboke. He is
told to return later in the evening. On his way back to the village he is in
an accident causing him to wake up in the sanitarium three days later with a
broken leg.

So starts his
journey unraveling the puzzle that is the sanitarium and its powerful
residents. There’s the facility’s Director Volmer (Isaacs) who doesn’t want
anything to set back the treatment of his patients. There’s a young woman,
Hannah (Goth), who says she’s a special case and is under the guardianship of
Volmer. There’s patient Victoria Watkins (Imrie) who likes to solve puzzles
and is digging deeper than she should into the dark history of the
institution. There's the "vitamins" everyone takes from blue bottles. And last but definitely not least is the Sanitarium itself, a
gothic castle framed by the mountains of the alps – full of majestic beauty
and wellness of its famed healing waters on the outside but masking a dark
reality of its many treatment rooms and wings and even darker creatures in
the aquifers.

This movie is visually
stunning. One can’t help admire the castle, the mountains, the treatment
rooms, the swimming pools, the architecture and the lighting. In addition to
its sunny appearance, there’s the mysterious atmosphere and dread that builds
as the story moves forward. Once its over, you may be left with many questions
to ponder but overall I enjoyed this captivating piece of gothic horror.